Lotteries were formerly the cause of remarkable elevations; and speculation in the funds may be still considered as amongst the elevating causes, though their effect is frequently to cause a sudden sinking.
— from Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete by Various

This likewise happened to the uncorrupted angels, who were overthrown the “sooner for their arms, for unarmed they might easily as spirits have evaded by contraction or remove.” Even as spirits they are hardly spiritual: for “contraction” and “remove” are images of matter; but if they could have escaped without their armour, they might have escaped from it, and left only the empty cover to be battered.
— from Lives of the English Poets : Waller, Milton, Cowley by Samuel Johnson

They fancy—Heaven help them!—that they have their claims on regard, esteem, and something stronger too; and doubtless the delusion has its influence in fighting off, for a year or two, the inevitable admission that they have dropped out of the “van” into that veteran battalion which furnishes no more guards of honour at the Temple of Venus, nor even a sentinel at the gate.
— from Luttrell Of Arran by Charles James Lever

Here is a double contradiction to the ordinances of Parliament, for in the directions of the Lords and Commons for choosing of ruling elders, and speedy settling of presbyterial government, it is appointed that ruling elders shall be members both of classes and synodical assemblies, together with the ministers of the word.
— from The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) by George Gillespie

It was to gain those craters, and new ones to be made by our mine charges, that the 74th Brigade of the 25th Division, a body of Lancashire men, the 9th Loyal North Lancashires and the 11th Royal Fusiliers, with a company of Royal Engineers and some Welsh pioneers, were detailed for the perilous adventure of driving in the mine shafts, putting tremendous charges of high explosives in the sapheads, and rushing the German positions.
— from Now It Can Be Told by Philip Gibbs

Not all the charm of diction, not all the ingenious theories in the world, can for a moment be set in the balance against rigid exactness, even if some of the concomitants of rigid exactness are such as to spoil the subject for popular treatment.
— from Aino Folk-Tales by Basil Hall Chamberlain

They were putting little Boudru to bed—the R.H.A. and the Corps of Royal Engineers and Stansfield, the big fat Infantry Sergeant.
— from War and the Weird by Forbes Phillips

Perhaps that sometime race of heroines, who wandered up hill and down dale in satin slippers—unsoiled—undraggled—and unscratched—and wept without the concomitants of red eyes and swelled noses; perhaps a race of such curious physiological construction possessed also the secret of losing their balance without losing their grace.
— from Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVI, No. 6, June 1850 by Various

Then they passed, and she could not but be conscious of relief, especially as she had neither money nor cigars.
— from Eleanor by Ward, Humphry, Mrs.

Its advance has been lately checked, but we do not yet know the real course of recent events, and still less can we foresee what is about to follow.
— from Great Britain and the American Civil War by Ephraim Douglass Adams